THE WAIMATE ADVERTISER. SATURDAY, APRIL 12, 1902. LABOUR COMMISSION.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume IV, Issue 189, 12 April 1902, Page 2

THE WAIMATE ADVERTISER. SATURDAY, APRIL 12, 1902. LABOUR COMMISSION.

A number of gentlemen of the Victorian legislature have been travelling through this country lately as a commission to enquire into the working of our labour laws, and particularly the Arbitration and Conciliation Act. A common argument against these laws has been that they fetter industry, tend to make it unprofitable, and scare capital away from the country, and these Victorian gentlemen made particular enquiries on these points from the witnesses that came before them. As it. happens there has just been issued by the Registrar-General certain statistics that speak more eloquently, and with njqgjj

•M-eator certainty and foivu than * iy individual witness *s that came before the Commission, possibly could. We allude to the returns published on March RBth last of the particulars of the various manufactories fchrougnoui the colony. The figures are somewhat startling and deserve special notice. We shall not go n ,u C h into details, but will give the chief totals, contrasting the state of things in 1890, 1895 and 11)01. We shall best present the matter to our readers in this way. We will put the figures in tabular form for the three different years ;l s follows : 1890- 1893- 1901Numburjof Works, Industries, etc. *2.234 2,459 3,080 Number of ' ngines, etc., employed __ 1,723 2,101 Amount of horse power 21 (-.go 28,090 59,113 Number of hands employed Males os.CGd 22,986 30,292 Females 2 95;) 4 403 10,355 Amount paid, V z , wages Males £1,705,641 £1,776,070 £2,972.190 Females £lO2 999 £131,516 £330,454 Value of materials operated on _ £5,285,247 £7,749,775 Approximate value of manufactures £8,773,837 £9,549,300 £17.853,133 (These figures are specially remarkable) Value of land used in manufacturing £1,283,755 £1,003.989 £1,980,428 Value of buildintrs £1,483.902 £1,743,073 £2,575 079 Value of machinery and plant £2,491,189 £2,988,955 £3,8-52,457 The returns do not include the Government Railway Workshops or printing office, which would undoubtedly considerably swell the total if included. When we consider that daring the last five years the population of the colony has not increased very much, the figures we have given are in some respects astonishing and furnish a pretty conclusive answer to [hose who argue that labour legislation is ruining colonial industries. In every case the increase has been enormously greater between 1895 and 1900 than between 1890 and 1895. Now, the bulk of the labour legislation was enacted since 1890 and the Arbitration Act has been in force only during the last five or six years, when the increase in manufactures has been almost phenomenal. This surely seems to prove beyond all question that so far the labour laws have certainly not resulted in a decrease of industrial activity, but in a remarkable increase. Unless, liming the next few years, there is a considerable diminution of the capital and men and women employed in manufactures it will be impossible to argue that the labour legislation has been harmful to the 1 ’ country, so far a 8 regards checking the growth of the industries of the productiveness of its people. On the other hand it is undeniably a much happier and a much, more desirable thing chat the working men and women of New Zealand should be able to live with something like decency, and that laweating should not be as it was Sin the old days, a plague and a ■pestilence spread through the length and breadth of the land.